Nathalie Richez "Les Regains" Maranges Rouge, Burgundy, France 2023

FROM ROSENTHAL:

THE WINE: 100% Pinot Noir. This well-situated vineyard in the commune of Cheilly-les-Maranges is nestled in the southeast corner of Maranges very close to the border of Santenay, and Nathalie owns a 0.4-hectare parcel of Pinot Noir here. Aged for 18 months in 20% new oak, “Les Regains” displays an iron-tinged minerality and a muscularity of structure not unlike that of a Nuits-Saint-Georges, yet its black fruit is delivered with energy, tension, and lift. Tannins are punchy but not rude, and the overall balance is noteworthy, particularly for an appellation prone to rusticity.

THE PRODUCER: Nathalie’s home is the little town of Chagny, on the border of the Côte de Beaune and the Côte Chalonnaise; she vinifies her wines in a spartan room adjacent to her house, in steel and fiberglass tanks, and her barrel cellar is a couple of gravel-floored chambers beneath an old stone shed in the backyard. Except for the Aligoté for the Bouzeron, all her wines, from humblest to grandest, pass 18 months in 20% new oak—low-toast barrels from a tiny local one-man operation. She destems everything fully, allows fermentations to proceed spontaneously, and only applies sulfur after malolactic is complete—an utterly nonradical regimen that well serves her wines’ sense of classicism. She works without chemical herbicides in the vineyards and regularly aerates the soil, but she chooses not to adapt a “practicing organic” label, as she wants to retain the flexibility to employ her best judgment in every situation.